The Rules of Trick-or-Treating

Our 4 year old Little Girl adopted 10 months ago from Ethiopia was hugely excited about her first Halloween yesterday.  Her big brothers and sister got to wear their costumes to school, so of course she insisted on putting on her costume at 7:30am along with her siblings.  Then when we sent them off to school, she looked at me expectantly and said, "Okay.  Let's go trick-or-treating!"  

At 8am!  She really did not understand at all why trick-or-treating could only happen at night!  Can you imagine if we'd gone and trick-or-treated at 8am, the looks the neighbors would give us?

_______________________

Just before it was finally time to go trick-or-treating we went over the rules.  You know, rules like:

1. You must say thank you and it must be a loud thank you, if I don't hear you from where I'm standing at the street, it doesn't count!
2. Stay together!
3. No stepping off a curb into the street without Mommy or Daddy with you.
4. No eating the candy until Mommy or Daddy have looked at it first!

_______________________  

Yeah, we felt a little smug about our parenting, having so well prepped our children.

I knew something was up about 5 houses in when the man giving out candy started laughing at something Little Girl had said, but I was off the porch and couldn't hear what she'd said to make him laugh.  Then a couple houses later I heard her say as she looked in a candy bowl that was handed to her to pick from,  "Ewwww!  No, chocolate is too messy!  I don't want that!"

We didn't think to have the rule about not giving a commentary about the candy people were handing out!  

Needless to say we had to stop right there and set the clear expectation that, "You do not complain about the kind of candy.  You take whatever candy they give you and you say, 'Thank you'.  And later at home you may be able to trade with your brothers or sister for different candy."

_______________________  

And everyone who had siblings growing up knows that the trading post Halloween trick-or-treating is the best part of the whole thing!   

That is only half of the candy the kids came home with, the boys emptied their buckets onto the table!

_______________________  

Some of our neighbors go all out for Halloween, as in they build a haunted house in their driveway with a large wood frame covered with plastic sheeting.  Little Girl was the only one of our kids brave enough to go in it!  It was hilarious, my 5 year old son looked at his 4 year old sister as she got in line and said, "Tell me how it is!"

_______________________  

Last, I have to admit to being the Halloween Scrooge this year.  Since we were giving out the organic, fair-trade chocolates, we only gave each trick-or-treater one piece!  In my defense, those Organic Milk Chocolates are not cheap and besides that stuff is good, I wanted some left-overs!  And I didn't have to actually feel stingy because my kids were all excited to pass out candy so they handled putting one into each child's bucket/bag.

_______________________  

Now that all the Halloween confusion/excitement is over, I really need someone to come explain the "Fall Back" time change to my children.  I'm fully expecting to be woken up by kids at 6am instead of the typical 7am beginning Sunday morning and extending for the foreseeable future.  Clearly whoever invented Daylight Savings Time did not have young children.  Clearly!

_______________________  

 

Happy Friday, Friends!

Find more Friday Fragments.